Today, the Supreme Court issued an order on the emergency docket in United States v. Texas. To avoid confusion with the umpteen other cases by that name, we can call the case Las Americas Immigrant Advocacy Center v. McCraw. This case presented a challenge brought by the federal government against Texas S.B. 4. The District Court entered preliminary injunction to block the law from going into effect. On March 2, a three-judge panel of the Fifth Circuit entered a "temporary administrative stay." The panel also stayed that temporary stay for seven days to permit an appeal to the Supreme Court. The panel also expedited the case for the April argument session.
Two days later, on March 4, the Solicitor General sought an application to vacate the stay of the preliminary injunction. Circuit Justice Alito promptly administratively stayed the case until March 13. On March 12, the Court extended the administrative stay until Mach 18. And on March 18, the stay was "hereby extended pending further order of Justice Alito or of the Court." It was a stay on top of a stay on top of a stay on top of a stay. Stays all the way down.
Today, the Court denied the application to stay the Fifth Circuit's temporary administrative stay. In other words, the Supreme Court's stay was dissolved. As a result, the Fifth Circuit's temporary administrative stay will go into effect, and thus S.B. 4 can be enforced. As is often the case, there was no opinion of the Court. There was only a single sentence without any reasoning. However, there were separate writings.
